


ivory

by macabre



Series: elemental [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Whump, Peter gets stitches, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, medical emergencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 13:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18411980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: There’s a monumental screw up in the paperwork that leads to the event; apparently even though Tony has jumped through every legal loophole to foster Peter, and even when the groundwork for legal adoption has been laid, Peter’s emergency contact in the state system is still some branch of CPS.





	ivory

There’s a monumental screw up in the paperwork that leads to the event; apparently even though Tony has jumped through every legal loophole to foster Peter, and even when the groundwork for legal adoption has been laid, Peter’s emergency contact in the state system is still some branch of CPS. 

Happy calls him sometime close to five when Tony is just starting to think about what he should make or get Peter for dinner. “Boss, I can’t find the kid.”

“What do you mean you can’t find my kid?”

“I’ve been wandering around this school for almost an hour now, and I can’t find him. His phone is either dead or ditched somewhere.” Happy sounds out of breath, like they’ve just gone a few rounds. “I’ve never had a problem with pick-up - he’s always outside waiting for me, Tony.”

He can almost actively hear FRIDAY firing up behind him, already on Peter’s trail. “I’m going to hang up on you now and start looking through security camera footage - try and find someone - anyone at that damn school who can help.”

“Boss.” This time it’s FRIDAY who’s verbally nudging him.

“Fuck.” Tony grabs a handful of his hair and just pulls at it as hard as he can. He can’t believe he’s already managed to lose track of a kid. 

“Boss.”

Tony takes a deep breath in. He can do this. “Please tell me you’ve already got me a lead.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Tony wishes he could kiss his AI. “Deep breath first.”

Shit. 

“I have no visual confirmation that it was Peter, but an ambulance was called to the school approximately three hours ago.”

“Destination?” It has to be Peter. There’s no way the kid would make Happy come look for him - something had to have happened.

“One moment; I am still tracking the license plate through traffic cameras.” 

Meanwhile, Tony is up and headed towards the elevator. 

“The ambulance took the patient to St. Elizabeth’s. Requesting permission before I go further into hospital records.”

“Yes, yes, of course!”

It’s a long pause of silence as Tony descends into the garage floor.

“It is indeed Peter. Time of intake was about an hour ago.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That hasn’t been updated yet, boss.”

“Why wasn’t I called?”

“CPS was notified, sir.”

Jesus.

“FRIDAY, get ahold of Michael Krutz and inform him of what’s happened so far in case I need him to handle CPS.”

“Of course. Good luck, Mr. Stark.”

St. Elizabeth’s isn’t even close to the kid’s brainiac school that he just started at - Tony’s not sure why the kid was routed so far if he’s had some sort of emergency. That’s when Happy calling gets patched in. 

“I found someone who responded a little better to my strong arming,” he says. “Apparently there was a fight. Both Peter and the other kid were hurt badly enough they needed to go to the hospital.”

“I’m going to kill that kid,” Tony fumes. What kind of school yard fight ended up in a hospital? Tony dealt with his fair share of bullies - family reputation be damned - but the worst he ever got came after the nurses’ office. 

“They, uh.” Happy clears his throat. “They said that Peter started it, sir.”

There’s no way. Not his Peter. His Peter who lovingly collects every insect he finds to relocate outside, not a literal fly to be hurt. His Peter who trails from room to room to turn off lights instead of asking FRIDAY to do it. Not His Peter who flinches at sudden movements, at a voice raised even in just excitement. 

“It’s gotta be a load of crap though,” Happy rambles on. “New kid at school. Taken out of foster care. You know how people love to stereotype.”

“Thanks, Happy. I’ve gotta go. I know where the kid is.” Tony cuts him off mid thought. 

“Wait, where - ”

Tony cuts the line. 

When he bursts through the doors of the ER, there’s not a single head that doesn’t swivel around to see who’s breaking the doors down. Tony marches straight up to the desk, takes off his sunglasses so that every single person knows exactly who he is.

“I’m looking for my kid, Peter Parker.”

The woman behind the desk just sits with her mouth hanging wide open. Tony repeats his request, more kindly than he feels, before an older woman working a little further back in the station comes up.

“Sir, do you have any form of identification?”

He doesn’t mean to glower as much as he does. “Do I need it?”

“Not for you, sir, but for the uh - the kid?”

TMZ broke the news that Tony Stark was fostering a kid almost instantaneously as the paperwork was filed, but his team has done a good job of keeping pictures out of the tabloids. For the first time, Tony almost wishes they had done some sort of press release with the kid - maybe he could be avoiding this question right now if Peter’s face was as recognizable as his. 

“Look, my lawyer is on his way and he can give you anything official you might need, but right now I got a kid that needs me.”

“Sir, I can’t just let you - ”

“You can, actually.”

“And I need to check and see what’s happening with his doctor before -”

“I swear to God, I will buy this hospital!”

“Mr. Stark.” There’s a hand pulling him back by the elbow. “I’ll handle this.”

Krutz is there, thank God. Tony eases back a little and lets his ridiculously expensive lawyer pull out series of papers and documents. Bureaucratic bullshit. Behind the nurses station, Tony can catch glimpses of the ER beyond the double doors next to him. There are stretchers of people just lying around in a chaotic mess. There’s a man with a gaping hole in his skull that is literally sitting alone in the room. 

Christ, Tony will sue this place into the ground if Peter is left someplace by himself. 

“Mr. Stark.” The person who’s calling his name from the other side isn’t dressed in scrubs, but in a modest black and white suit. A middle aged guy, probably a few years younger than him.

Tony blows right past him into the hall, eyes scanning in both directions. 

“Mr. Stark, my name is Brian Walters. I’m the child advocate on duty right now. I’ve been updated on Peter’s case, and -”

“Just take me to my kid.” 

There are people on stretchers, there are people in an identical line of chairs even on this side of the waiting room, and then there is a stretch of rooms in every direction. There is low moaning nearby that sends a chill down Tony’s back, his hair standing up on the back of his neck. 

“Actually, the doctor is finishing up right now, I can take you in just a moment.”

Tony takes a deep breath. He pivots to face the other man. “Look, Peter is underage, and I’m his legally appointed guardian. He should have never gotten this far without me. I do not know what game the state is playing with me right now, but so help me - ”

“Mr. Stark, please don’t -” Brian Whatshisname is about to go into a legal spiel, but Tony feels it suddenly. He’s not sure how long it’s been going on, but he realizes that FRIDAY is tapping out morse code from the back of his watch. 

134.

It has to be his room number. 

Tony takes off. 

The room isn’t even that far from where he was standing. It’s an open room - no door, for Christ’s sake - but even with the lack of a door Tony can see right into the room through an observation window. 

He freezes, the blood drawn from his face.

“Get your fucking hands off him!”

Peter is strapped down to a table in a literal straitjacket. It looks attached to some kind of board - something that runs lengthwise as long as the kid. It must be used to easily transport patients, he realizes in the back of his mind, but every thought feels like it’s struggling against the tide, because all he sees is Peter’s face which is completely covered in blood. It’s in his eyebrows and hair, his teeth when he grits them and struggles against the confines they have him in.

There are multiple people calling his name, including a faceless doctor in scrubs and a couple of nurses trying to come in-between him and the kid. 

“Mr. Stark!” Tony lashes out and punches whoever is grabbing him - the so-called child advocate. 

There’s now definitely going to be a lawsuit - it’s another one of his floating thoughts. 

“I said - back the fuck up from my kid. Now.”

The doctor puts up his hands. There’s some kind of delicate silver instrument in his hand. The nurses back away towards the corners of the room. 

“M-Mr. Stark.” A tiny voice. Peter’s teeth are chattering, he realizes. “Tony.”

“Yeah, kid, I’m here.” Tony steps up to Peter’s side and brushes a hand through the kid’s blood soaked hair. When he pushes it back from his forehead, he sees a thin streak of his skin that isn’t red. 

Tony immediately bends over and plants a kiss right there. There are tears in his eyes and the thick fog that’s in his head is growing thicker when suddenly all he can smell is the blood that’s pressed into his nose. 

“Tony.” It’s barely a whisper, even so close to Tony’s ear. 

“Pete, I’m here. I’m so sorry.”

When he pulls away enough to look over Peter’s face, he immediately zeros in on two things - one, the kid’s eyes are so blown that they’re almost black, and two - well, the blood is definitely his. There’s a long gash in one cheek, almost from ear to the corner of his lips, that has already been stitched shut, but then there’s Peter’s lips. Specifically, his upper lip. 

It looks like pulverized meat. There’s no other image that comes to Tony’s mind. What’s even more horrifying, and a delayed realization, is that there is a thin black string trailing from one side of Peter’s mouth.

“What happened?” Tony rasps out, one hand simultaneously trying to pull his kid closer and further away. “Peter, what - ”

“Sir, your son will be fine, but he really shouldn’t speak until we’ve finished with the sutures.”

Just feet outside the doorframe there is a small commotion - Happy is here, he thinks. Happy is struggling with hospital security. 

“Why is he awake?” Tony gently presses a thumb over one of Peter’s eyelids - they flutter close. Another fleeting thought, coming and going, is that he can feel Peter’s breath slowing down. His other hand stays on top of the kid’s chest.

“He’s been giving local anesthetic, sir, and some pain relief. He doesn’t need to be put under for some stitches, I assure you.”

“Yeah, well, he also doesn’t need to be strapped down like a dog either.” Tony straightens and starts fidgeting with the ties around Peter’s chest. 

“Mr. Stark.” The doctor dares take another step further. “Peter was having a hard time staying calm. It’s not recommended for us to give him anything other than a local anesthetic, and we needed him to keep still. He still needs seven stitches to pull together his upper lip. Do you understand?”

While he’s standing there looking down at Peter, a fresh wave of blood pours out of the kid’s lip. It’s gruesome to watch. Peter just dazedly blinks at Tony. 

“Take it off of him. Now.”

“Sir, I really don’t think -”

“He’s a fucking abuse survivor, and he doesn’t need this thing holding him down. Take it off, now!”

Peter gives a whole body flinch, either at Tony’s raised voice or his use of the a-word, he’s not sure. The kid’s lips are quivering, from tears, from pain, from shock. 

“Shhh, baby, don’t say anything.” Tony continues to pull at the contraption around his kid. “I’ll hold him still. I’ll hold him.”

A nurse finally assists him. It takes her less than ten seconds to remove the jacket, then Peter is struggling forward into Tony’s arms. He picks him up - Tony can’t believe how little the kid weighs - it’s his first time picking the kid up like this - and sits with Peter in his arms, back to front, arms wrestled under his.

“I got you now, Pete. It’s just me.” 

Outside the room, Tony can see that Happy has stopped struggling with the security and everyone has stilled to watch him rock his kid back and worth. 

The doctor approaches. He clears his throat, and Tony stops rocking. He sits as still as he can. 

“Peter, this is only going to take me a minute if you stay still, okay?” The doctor says as he adjusts the glasses on his nose. 

Tony slips one hand across Peter’s forehead, holds his head back against Tony’s cheek, then braces him own head against the wall. “I’m so sorry, Pete.”

His kid stays still and silent for the rest of the hospital visit, to the point that the doctor is now desperately trying to get the kid to react to anything. Once the stitches are done, they move Peter back to the bed, now without the deathtrap on top of it, and the nurses ask a string of questions that Peter ignores. His eyes are completely glazed over, his mouth slack and puffy. 

“Is any of this necessary?” Tony asks, impatiently hovering by Peter’s shoulder. “He’s in shock. He’ll do best at home now.”

The doctor literally throws up his hands. “I’m signing the discharge papers, Stark, but keep an eye on those stitches for any infection. The lip, especially.”

In the end, it’s twenty-three stitches total. Peter’s upper lip had been split completely open. Tony gets an earful about making sure he gets enough to eat and drink to restore the natural blood loss, but he knows it’s also because the kid’s ribs are visible through his torn shirt. 

Happy silently drives them home. Tony still isn’t sure what happened, but he does know now that the other kid that Peter supposedly was involved in a fight with got off with a scraped up face, no stitches. He gets a name - Eugene Thompson - and he’s rehearsing in his head what exactly he’s going to say to the school when he calls in. 

Tony keeps Peter pulled halfway in his lap in the car; it’s by far the most physical contact they’ve had since Peter came to live with him. They’ve gotten better - Peter has even felt confident enough to ask for hugs - but never could Tony imagine his kid sitting in his lap like this. 

Ever since they let Peter out of the jacket, his face has stayed scarily void. It’s familiar to Tony though - it’s the same blank face that greeted him when they first met, when Peter first moved in, nervously trying to hover close without being too close or considered in the way. 

He’s barely blinking. Tony knows that the meds they gave him have worn off, and they didn’t suggest anything other than Tylenol as needed now. It’s difficult to look at Peter’s face without physically reacting, and yet the doctor assured him that it was basically just a flesh wound. 

When they reach the tower, Happy gets the door for them and Tony struggles to maneuver Peter out of the car in his arms. He ends up with the kid’s arms locked around his neck and his legs wound around his waist. Even in this moment, Tony can’t help but feel so fucking full - fostering a kid who was already fifteen meant Tony had missed out on so much that other parents experience. He never got to give his little boy piggyback rides or carry him to bed, until now.

He feels selfish for thinking it, but holding Peter like this now gives him something he didn’t know he was missing. He cradles the back of Peter’s skull, planting another kiss at the kid’s temple. He can feel Peter’s shallow breathes in his ear, a comfort the likes of which Tony couldn’t have fathomed until now. 

When they reach their living floor, Tony bypasses the kid’s room for his own. He’s planning to lay the kid out in his bed, put on the television on low for him, and hover nearby, but all that gets pushed aside when the kid won’t let go of his neck.

“Pete?” No response, but the breath in his ear is speeding up. “Petey Pie? You wanna lie back down?”

There’s a soft groan followed by a hiccup - a growing dampness on Tony’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, you’re okay now - I’ve got you, Pete. You can let go.”

The dam breaks, and then Peter is full on sobbing into Tony’s neck, his hold on him tightening to the point it’s no longer remotely comfortable. Tony sits on the bed to alleviate the growing pain in his lower back, gently rocks the kid forward and backward, shushing him gently as he imagines one would an infant. 

He doesn’t try to remove Peter from his front - it’s exactly what his father, or even his mother on most days, would have done. Removed him and handed him off to Jarvis. He’d be lying if his parameters for parenting don’t come directly from - what wouldn’t his parents do?

“I’m s-sorry,” Peter stutters, speaking for the first time since Tony’s outburst in the ER.

“Hey, you do not need to apologize,” Tony answers fiercely. 

When Peter pulls away just slightly, enough to look up at Tony’s face, he is quiet for just a breath, then he’s crying harder than ever. “I’m sorry,” he says again, relinquishing his hold on Tony and sliding onto the floor miserably. “I know I’m too big for this.”

His breathing is a mess of panting and hiccuping, his cheeks blotchy red probably, but Tony can’t tell from the smears of blood left over the kid’s face. Tony sinks to the floor, following Peter’s motions. 

“Peter, listen to me.” Tony holds one of Peter’s hands in-between both of his. Waits until the kid looks up at him again. “I’m your - ”

Father, guardian, foster parent - 

“Person,” he says. “And you’re never going to be too big or too old to cry on my shoulder if you need, okay?”

Peter tries to quell his rapid hiccuping by holding in his breath, his cheeks bulging. He curls in over his stomach - Tony wonders if it might be upset by all the crying and potentially the medication given to him earlier. 

Tony desperately wants to ask Peter who told him he was too big to be a kid, who held him when he was a baby and if they swaddled him up in their arms like Tony just did. The information that was gathered on Peter Parker was so thin it was certainly neglectful. Tony likes to steal away the little bits of information that Peter drops from time to time - which side of the bed Peter sleeps on, what colors he tends to favor, how his breath smells first thing in the morning - and he logs it all meticulously in his own server, as if it’s not already burned to memory.

Peter is wearily watching him, arms clutching his stomach. His face is such a mess. Tony sighs, standing. When Peter lets out a muffled cry, one hand making an aborted reach for him, Tony runs a hand through the kid’s hair. 

“I’m just gonna grab a rag and clean you up a little, okay?”

He thinks of Rhodey helping him change in college after all night bingers as he sits on the floor next to Peter and gingerly wipes away the leftover blood on his face and neck. For those first few years, Rhodey acted almost as much as a parent as he did friend. Tony takes careful note of how the stitches look - nice and tight, even. There will be a faint scar on his cheek, probably. 

“You hungry?”

Peter shakes his head. Of course.

“Tired?”

A shrug. 

“Anything hurt at all?”

Another shrug.

“Okay tough guy.” Tony helps Peter to his feet. “Do you want to take a bath?” There’s still blood matted in the kid’s hair, something that the rag isn’t going to help.

Peter shakes his head. His eyes are less wide, a slow fatigue setting in. He asks, “Can we just hang out on the couch?”

“Of course, bud. I’m going to order us something to eat, and whatever you feel up to eating now, okay?”

Peter nods, slowly trailing out the doorway. He’s wearing Tony’s jacket that he replaced the bloodied mess of a t-shirt with earlier - it’s only about three sizes too large, Tony thinks fondly. Peter’s hands are pulled inside the sleeve, one of his signature comforting mechanisms. 

After Tony tosses the dirty washcloth into the laundry bin, he washes his hands and looks up at his reflection in the mirror. He looks exactly the same as he did last year, but he’s so far from the same person. He simultaneously wants to punch that mirror in when he thinks about Peter’s face, but also a smaller part of him wants to drown in this feeling of closeness that the day has unexpectedly brought. 

That night Peter sits close to him on the couch - close enough his side is pressed into Tony’s, which is useful for when Tony needs to intercept Peter’s wandering fingers as they get close to his stitches. 

“I had a social worker before,” Peter says softly in the middle of a movie. He keeps his eyes on the cuffs of the jacket. “He once told me they’re your real parent once they clean bodily fluids off you.”

He plucks away at the cuffs, but at least it’s not the stitches. 

Tony wants to say a lot of things, but they’d all either scare him or the kid, so he says nothing at all and wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulder. He kisses the side of his head once, then twice. He keeps going, picking up speed until Peter laughs. 

“I’m a real something, kid, let me tell you what.”

Peter looks up at him from his horribly crunched posture under Tony’s arm, eyes wide and brown and freshly tearing up. 

This time, Tony lets Peter see him cry, and when Tony wakes up the next morning, getting ready to call both the hospital and the school, he realizes that FRIDAY has added her own details to Peter’s file on his server. 

The latest is a simple snapshot from the night before on the couch, the two of them asleep in a soft blue light from the television. There’s that pinch in the bottom of his stomach - a real parent, Peter called him. 

When Peter wakes up and trails into the kitchen, still dressed in Tony’s jacket, he thinks it must be true. The simple pleasure and pride that fills Tony as he watches his kid eat would be ludicrous otherwise.


End file.
